The heat has kept us indoors during the day and everyone was becoming a bit antsy. So, my family and I hit the road. We had no particular destination in mind – just a map, a Tom-Tom (we call it “Sam” because it sounds like Yosemite Sam), and a list of ghost towns. The cooler was packed with bottled water, tea, and sandwich fixings. The kids had books and MP4 players that kept them occupied in between the bouts of never-ending slug-a-bug. The excitement was palpable.
We cruised down dirt roads and winding roads and painfully narrow roads. We took the kids to see the Regency suspension bridge and scared the daylights out of them. A little more than halfway across we met an oncoming car. For those of you who have not yet seen this bridge, let me tell you two cars will not fit on that bridge. The oncoming car backed up, and we made it across. At this point my youngest daughter exclaimed breathlessly, “I had my eyes closed over the whole first half of that bridge!” In response, my husband immediately quipped, “Me, too!” much to the dismay of the children.
Of course then we had to turn around and go BACK over the bridge. This second trip was accompanied by much wailing and “We’re going to die!” from the kids in the back seat.
After the bridge, we ventured to places whose time has passed. We saw abandoned buildings, old cemeteries, and many historical markers. I admit to being a junkie of those markers. This is something my husband learned about me early on – our first date I made him stop (at night) so I could read a marker (by the light of a lighter). It was very windy. He burned his fingers. But I read the marker!
Now, my children have developed the habit of looking for markers. We stopped and read at least a dozen. We read about the 11 men who were traveling that held off nearly 200 warriors from a nearby tribe, killing more than 80 of them before they left. The 11 men survived. We read about two boys kidnapped and how one was returned but the other was adopted into a family of Comanche – specifically Quanah Parker’s family. We learned that General Robert E. Lee was stationed at Fort Mason when he agreed to join the battle of the Civil War. As we stood at the top of the hill in the reconstructed quarters of Fort Mason and gazed at the amazing view, my children were awed….as I was. We all felt surrounded by history, and imagined what it must have been like back then.
We saw cemeteries dating back to the 1800s and my children were greatly affected by all the children and babies who were there. This lead to a discussion of the differences in health care, doctors, medication, and culture; things were different back then. My oldest son gazed at me silently a moment, then said, “Mom, we are really lucky.”
Our trip was not without difficulty. We had a flat tire someplace in the middle of nowhere. My husband tells me that changing a flat, on the highway, in 100 plus degrees is not fun. It didn’t look fun. He was really sweating. I made sandwiches, since we were stopped for a while anyway. My youngest son became distraught over the idea that we might run out of gas, in spite of our best efforts to assure him that we had gas in the car. There was some crankiness after our impromptu picnic – but that was improved as each child fell asleep.
We did not see any ghosts, much to my oldest daughter’s disappointment.
As we finally headed home at the end of the day – tired and happy – my youngest son was full of all he had seen and learned. He summed it all up by saying, “Mom…that was fun! And I learned something and it’s not even school! It was fun education!”
Imagine that….
Christine Moore currently holds a degree in education and psychology from Howard Payne University and has a M.Ed. in Curriculum and Instruction. She is now working on her Ph.D. in Educational Technology at Walden University. Married with four children who attend Brownwood schools, Christine teaches 6th grade reading in Brownwood and has been working in education at various levels for the past 15 years. Christine welcomes your questions and comments and would love to hear from you!
